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We can no longer operate on the assumption that the Western capitalist culture of self-contained individualism is superior to all other cultural forms and continue to encode those values in the practice of psychoanalysis.

To survive, any society requires moral legitimization. The philosophy of liberal individualism serves to legitimize capitalism because it espouses ideals that suggest that all human rights and needs are respected under its terms. If it were generally recognized that capitalism is a system of dominance and exploitation that requires the enrichment o... See more

In the spirit of its time, traditional psychoanalysis consisted of an authoritarian analyst–patient relationship and promulgated values such as a scientific approach to human affairs, the affirmation of paternalistic gender roles, individual achievement, personal responsibility, and a strongly bounded self.

Psychoanalysis is profoundly influenced by and in turn influences the social, economic, cultural, and political contexts in which it is practiced. Although created as a therapy for individual suffering, psychoanalysis has also always contained important implications for the progressive development of a more humane society and has defined its cures ... See more

Relational psychoanalytic models, sometimes referred to as intersubjective, do not view individuals as discrete centers of experience and action; instead, they assert that all self-experience is ontologically social. They challenge the “myth of the isolated mind” (Stolorow and Atwood, 1992, p. 7) and suggest that psychological experience is derived... See more

In this paper, Walls tells how the popular ideas of psychoanalysis and even the self have been selectively informed by Darwin's ideas of competition and individualism. The societal exclusion of Darwin and other scientist's work on the superiority of group cooperation has made for a model of psychology that looks for causes of distress within the in... See more

A traditional ego-psychology analysis typically focuses on analyzing the patient’s inner life as the main source of problems. In contrast, a relational analyst emphasizes not only the patient’s inner life, but also the mutual relational dynamics of the therapeutic interaction in the session.

The psychoanalysis of self psychology serves an implicit social function in seamlessly hiding the contradictions in the economic, political and cultural arrangements of our society by not analyzing them, and therefore allowing them to remain as unconscious determinants of suffering.

Culture and Psychoanalysis  Human suffering often may stem from the way that the culture promotes the pursuit of impossible ideals and unlimited narcissistic gratification that serves an unacknowledged economic purpose benefiting some members of society at the cost of others... Advertising fans the flames of widespread and insatiable narcissis... See more